Monday, January 10, 2011

Yesterday 9-year-old Fahim and his dad, GiLoCatur, had participated in the nationally-rated 17ChessClub Open organized by Pengurusan Catur Ar Rahman. The 7 Swiss rounds of G/25 tournament was held in the DAT Chess Center. The tournament had attracted about 50 local chess players including Malaysian-based pinoy, Ian Udani.

In order to fulfill the mission of Improving Chess Ratings, GiLoCatur brought Fahim to the first rated chess tournament for the year 2011. His elder brother, Fikri, and sister, Anis Fariha, could not come along because they are at their boarding school and the school is just started. So, how was the performance?

Fahim just managed to win a game and draw another. In the first two rounds his opponents were rated-17ChessClub gang - Syed and Max. Long way to go for him still. GiLoCatur had to face five rated and 2 unrated opponents. GiLoCatur managed to win against both the unrated opponents and one of the five rated ones. GiloCatur's scores higher Tournament Performance Rating than the actual one i.e. 1233. A good start for GiLoCatur eh! :)-

Fireyrook (right) vs Odyssey (left) in Round 1

Ng6 (right in blue shirt)

One interesting fact about the tournament is that the 17ChessClub tournament had attracted several Malaysian chess bloggers. They are Razali Hamzah aka Ng6, Shamsuddin Sabri aka fireyrook, Nor Ilhamuddin Shaikh Ali of ChessOdyssey, Rizal Ahmad Kamal who is the blog owner of Rizal's Chess Trading and GiLoCatur.

Neatly-dressed Max

(GiLoCatur : Chess players should emulate him for the dress code while participating in a chess tournament.)

Fauzi Ahim (left in above picture) had taken up the challenge to play in a rated tournament. As far as GiLoCatur can recall, he had not played in any rated tournament previously. Therefore he has yet have a national or MCF rating.

Blogger Rizal (right)

GiLoCatur notices several new faces in the tournament. Some are really totally new in chess tournaments while others just make a comeback like Foo Chee Kin, GiLoCatur Round 1 opponent. According to him, he is just making a comeback after five years. His last national rating is around 1700. In fact, Chee Kin was placed second during the recent Sarawak Open. Click here for the tournament's final ranking in chess-results.com.

Foo Chee Kin

Abdullah Che Hassan, the champion

So what are the results? Who became the champion? Who were the winnners?

Abdullah Che Hassan had been declared as the champion after having better tie breaks than Ian Udani and Ahmad Fadzil Nayan. All three of them scored 6/7 points. Fadzil could not manage to win or draw in the final round against Ian to become the champion. The recent Malay champion Saprin who beat Ian in the 5th round, could not continue his winning streak after being defeated by Abdullah and Fadzil in the last two rounds.